


Listen for an echo

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, I'm surprised there isn't a tag for that?, Multiple Personalities, Post-Series, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 12:07:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1857453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sarah Manning runs, keeps running, bickers with ghosts, keeps running, and has a lot of problems with mirrors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Listen for an echo

**Author's Note:**

> IIIIII've been working on this for literal months and I'm just done with it. Take it.

The second problem is her hair, and what to do with it – she can’t keep it the way it is now, tendrils of Beth’s ghost falling down her shoulders, moving when she breathes, a spilling. It would be a lie, and if there is one thing she is sick of it is  _lying_.

Nothing else works – red is Katja’s head lolling in the backseat, red is blood, red is blood, red is blood and blood and blood and blood and blood; blonde is Helena and Rachel, too close and too far for comfort, blonde is ghost-bleach, the fading of old photographs, that undoing; black, well, orphan-in-the-. Orphan. Black. The charred bones of a house, the wreckage of a fire.

She is, herself, the wreckage of a fire.

In the end she decides upon an undoing – she bleaches her hair again in stringy tendrils at the bathroom sink, although it is more difficult when she is not using a mirror. It feels like a reverting, and she shudders at the feeling of her own fingers braiding her hair. Her fingers are foreign things; they do not belong to her.

She turns her back and goes, goes like she could keep going forever.

She won’t admit to herself that she is running.

She is running.

She wonders if they miss her; they probably do, which is  _stupid_. She blew back into their life and brought the-usual-Sarah-shitestorm with her, she brought death along with her like a cloak too tattered and faded by far. Sarah brought death with her and oh, god, she took it with her when she left. It lingers in the smell of Alison’s perfume in her hair and the plume of smoke rising from the joints of kids on the corners. There is an urge in her to rip it from their hands and claw at them with her nails; it is a constant struggle not to be an animal, and that is all Helena. She is all Helena. She carries their ghosts with her, all of them, weighing down her back (the curve of  _Beth’s_  back, and she is all that remains) (almost) (she is all that _remains_ ).

She wonders if they miss her. They shouldn’t, but she writes them letters anyways – Helena perches next to her, smearing her fingers over the letters, saying  _Kira wrote you back, do you remember_.

Sarah ignores her firmly and holds her breath until she goes.

(The first problem is mirrors.)

* * *

_A security tape from a convenience store. Time stamp: 1:03 AM._

_A woman slouches in, turned away from the camera out of habit. A hood is pulled over her head, as if she is used to not being seen. For a moment she slips, and looks at the camera from the corner of her eyes; her face, tilted up at the screen, is a white thumbprint against the black of her. It is impossible to tell from the grainy quality whether or not she looks tired. It is only a flash, and then she moves to tilt her head back down._

_Here the footage pauses for a while – precisely two minutes and sixteen seconds – before playing onward._

* * *

She does what she has to do to keep going – ignores the pointed sniff coming from over her shoulder, ignores the pill bottle rattling of breath at the back of her neck. _Not like you have any right to judge_ , she thinks sourly, rifling through a man’s wallet as quietly as possible so that she doesn’t wake him. _Not like you have_ any _right to fucking judge, yeah?_

She works odd jobs. She works odd hours. It’s easy enough to slip into thievery, like a second skin. She is still careful – nothing she does is enough to get her on record, get her _face_ on record, stir up (Art) (Angie) those old hounds to bay after her blood.

None of it is enough to stir up…well. Other things.

She’s careful. She has to be. She slips in and out of towns like a – shadow, and in and out of lives just as easily. It’s almost _too_ easy. Maybe she was designed to run, and run, and keep running forever.

Not that she’s running. She just has to keep moving forward, or she’ll die. Like a shark.

If she stops to think, she will die.

She will _die_.

* * *

_Footage from the camera in an alley behind a club. Time stamp: 3:14 AM._

_The alley is silent until it is not, a tangle of two women bursting out the back door. They glitch and stutter across the screen as the camera’s frame rate labors, suddenly pressed up against the wall. The taller woman – blonde – has her head thrown back, eyes tightly screwed up as her mouth wobbles open and closed._

_The other woman’s face is turned away from the camera. She is moving very fast. Her face is pressed into her companion’s neck; her fingers, underneath the other woman’s skirt, move with a merciless haste._

_~~She seems angry~~ _ _She stops, wipes her hand on her pants, and pushes the other woman away aggressively when she attempts to reciprocate._

_The footage cuts out when the door slams behind the brunette, although the other woman is still in the alley._

* * *

(Let’s just say, hypothetically, that she’s running.

Let’s consider the idea of that _almost_.

Put these things together and consider the fact that if you are running, you have to either be running _from_ or running _to_. Think about the fact that Sarah has never been very good at running _to_.

She certainly thinks about it a lot. Thinks about going back. Thinks about gathering Kira up in her arms and breathing in the smell of her, all that new skin. Thinks about being respectable, responsible. Thinks about looking in mirrors.

Toronto isn’t her city, though, not really. Not anymore.

She could go back. Gather Kira up in her arms, be respectable, look in mirrors, say: _so. And then there were two._

To have a mirror you need a reflection, after all. Don’t you?)

* * *

_To: memo@dyad.net_

_Subject: Final procedures_

_The remaining laboratories will be closing this week. Please make sure that all pertinent data is removed or destroyed._

_It’s been a pleasure working with you all._

* * *

At this point Sarah’s used to waking up in strange beds, with strange people – when she fucks women they are usually blonde. When she fucks men they have dark hair; they are often thin, scrawny, except when she finds herself kissing big hulking masses of muscle, military types. On those nights she leaves fast, fast as she can, slipping out the door without a sound (on those nights she does not steal, and refuses to think about why).

Tonight’s no different; she wakes in a dingy back bedroom tangled in sheets, breath stinking of old meat and the bitter mixed-drink taste of regret. She isn’t surprised to see a man next to her – she never likes staying with the women for long – and she feels something that’s a cousin to gladness as she notes that he’s still asleep, and deeply.

Rolling her tongue around her mouth to chase the ghosts of last night’s mistakes, she hops out of bed and follows the trail of her clothing to the door. Sarah pulls on pieces haphazardly as she goes, an uncaring patchwork. She’s still trying to remember last night. Was the sex good? Fuck if she remembers.

At this point she’s just fucking people for that brief, glorious second where she is at once the farthest out of her body and the farthest in it she can get anymore. She swings nauseatingly between wanting them to call her name and wanting them to forget it entirely; on the one hand, she wants the validation that they want _her_ , that when they see her face they see only Sarah (she stopped using fake names a while ago), but on the other hand…not really her body anymore, is it? Doesn’t she owe them _something?_

(This is possibly the thinking of a crazy person.)

She fucks them for so many reasons: to know that she still can, to know that she can manipulate people with a smile and twitch of her hips; for the money, for the free showers and full night of sleep; for the hunger that snarls in her chest that says _closer_ , says _now_ , says _I was alone and did not know it until I was not. Now I am alone and I know I am alone and it_ hurts _, it hurts so badly._

Right now she’s mostly thinking of the second reason. But: right now she mostly wants to be _gone_. No shower. Instead she wanders until she finds the kitchen, rummages through cabinets and pulls out a Pop-tart and, from another cabinet, a bottle of whiskey. Breakfast of fuckin’ champions.

She scrawls out a note – something like _had a great time, had to go, sorry_ – and walks out the door.

* * *

_An audio transcript; it is missing the corresponding footage. There are two voices, similar in tone and accent – likely British – and various indecipherable background noises._

_[loud banging sounds, footsteps]_

_Voice 1: You can’t possibly be considering running._

_Voice 2: Shut up. Shut the fuck up._

_[Voice 2 is constantly moving; the footsteps are likely hers.]_

_Voice 1: You’re going to abandon your family? You’re going to abandon_ Kira?

 _Voice 2: Stop_ talking! _You weren’t there, you had no bloody idea, you emotionless_ bitch _, you don’t even fucking—_

_[silence unbroken except the faint sounds of breathing – possibly sobs?]_

_Voice 2: If you or your_ people _get anywhere near Kira, I’ll hunt each and every one of you down and put a bullet in your bloody brains myself. Got it?_

_[silence]_

_[a door slams]_

* * *

She glitches back into herself in a gas station bathroom, staring at the cracked shards of mirror above the sink in front of her. Her knuckles are dripping into the sink; old scars have reopened and her hands are a smeared mess of red.

Her eyes blink at her over and over and from the mirror.

 _You punch like a girl_ , Tony says, and Sarah can feel his grin pulling at the corner of her mouth, like fingers. She doesn’t say anything back. Instead she runs the sink, lets the rusty water wash her own rust away.

She thinks, for a sun-bright second of memory, about Katja. The spray of her blood as it left the car. The weight of Beth’s hair piled on her head; the weight of Beth’s clothes piled on her back.

Katja’s been silent for (days) (weeks) (months) a long time; her voice, when she speaks, is slow and aching with dust.

 _Running doesn’t work,_ she says, her accent melting her words together. _Eventually – headshot._

Then her voice settles into a low susurrus, _who am I who am I who am I_ , and Sarah thinks she’s done. She being both Katja and Sarah in this case, because that’s the joke.

Sarah thinks maybe she should get psychiatric help, that’s what she thinks. But: if she kills these ghosts, then all of them are dead. Every single one of them is dead.

It’s probably her fault anyways, all of this – Sarah’s sure she can find the blame in there somewhere, in the lack of needle marks on her arms and hips and skin, in her daughter breathing back in Toronto, in her hands on guns or not on guns or reaching or never quite grasping or in the scars on her knuckles, scars that bloomed too late for Cosima’s fingers to trace over them.

“I don’t do ‘run’,” she says experimentally, to the mirror. Her eyes skitter off her eyes skitter off her eyes skitter off her eyes, land on the dingy white porcelain of the sink.

Helena laughs, a bright and joyous sound, like shattering glass.

* * *

_A crumpled up piece of paper – possibly a Post-it note. (Note that it has been placed in an evidence bag for safekeeping.) There is an address written on it. The ink has been smeared by time and exposure. There are several stains; although it is near-impossible to decipher their origins without damaging the paper they are likely (respectively) blood, sugar from a melted lollipop, and lipstick. The paper reads:_

_Cam[obscured]n A[obscured], [obscured]ite #[obscured]_

* * *

Sarah walks into the building slow, ghost-weight pulling every single one of her muscles back. She shouldn’t be here. This is an absolute certainty.

She presses the elevator button anyways, looks to the side at the enormous chandelier in the building’s lobby and the stream of well-dressed people pouring in and out. It’s an opulent space, reeking of people who have spent just enough money to look like they haven’t spent very much money at all. She doesn’t belong here. She shouldn’t be here.

She meets the eyes of every single person who walks by, defiantly. This is to avoid her smeared reflection in the polished metal of the elevator door.

 _Ding_. Doors open. Sarah gets in. Jabs a button, stands there, shifts weight from foot to foot. Her heartbeat is a sick weight in her chest. It says: _leave_.

 _Hearts are easy to silence_ , says Helena, flickering blonde-brown-blonde in the shiny elevator wall. _But you knew that, sestra. Yes?_

(Yes, Sarah knows.)

The doors have closed and, moving up, it seems like the walls are closing in around her. This is a mistake. There is nowhere to run from here. Sarah’s heart claws at the walls of her throat; there is no way it could possibly scream louder than it is already screaming.

 _Ding_. Doors open. People file in, and the press of bodies around Sarah makes her jump and twitch in a way it probably shouldn’t, in a way it definitely didn’t used to. _Out_ is a sick war-drum in her chest. _Out, out, out_.

 _Ding—_ she’s out before the doors have opened all the way, muscled her way through a cloud of perfume and vague offense and stumbled into the hallway.

 _At least there’s no bloody elevator music_ , she thinks as she walks, the hallway stretching on and on and on indefinitely.

Finally Sarah reaches the door. _Well_ , she thinks sourly, _got anything clever to say_ , and she hears a laugh that sounds like Cosima’s. (She’s losing it.) (But she knew that.)

She knocks on the door in one solid _thump_. Waits. Sways from side to side, a continuous seasick motion. She is on the balls of her feet; she is still considering running.

The door opens.

“There you are,” says Rachel Duncan, like Sarah told her she would be by, like Sarah was expected half an hour ago and she is running late. “Drink?”

* * *

_Buzek, Justyna  
Status: Deceased_

_Childs, Elizabeth  
Status: Deceased_

_Duncan, Rachel  
Status: Active_

_Fitzsimmons, Jennifer  
Status: Deceased_

_Fournier, Danielle  
Status: Deceased_

_Giordano, Aryanna  
Status: Deceased_

_Glynn, Lisa  
Status: Deceased_

_Goderitch, Krystal  
Status: Deceased_

_Hendrix, Alison  
Status: Deceased_

_Jensen, Sofia  
Status: Deceased_

_Johnson, Miriam  
Status: Deceased_

_Kaminska, Ania  
Status: Deceased_

_Lintula, Niki  
Status: Deceased_

_Lloyd, Stephanie  
Status: Deceased_

_Manning, Sarah  
Status: Active_

_Meijer, Fay  
Status: Deceased_

_Meijer, Femke  
Status: Deceased_

_Niehaus, Cosima  
Status: Deceased_

_Obinger, Katja  
Status: Deceased_

_Sawicki, Tony  
Status: Deceased_

_Suominen, Veera  
Status: Deceased_

_Xxxxxx, Helena  
Status: Deceased_

_West, Gillian  
Status: Deceased_

_Zingler, Janika  
Status: Deceased_

* * *

“I think it’s probably polite to ask ‘how have you been’ in scenarios like these,” Rachel murmurs from the kitchen behind Sarah as she pours bourbon into two glasses. Sarah snaps back to awareness sharply, like the sting of a rubber band against a wrist; turns around on the sharp and uncomfortable couch to watch Rachel move with a lazy sort of ease around her kitchen.

“You’re probably gonna tell me anyways, even if I don’t ask,” she mutters, eyes twitching around the room – the windows are large, and she can see the entire city spread out, dizzyingly, below.

Rachel shrugs; her mouth twists up at the corners. “Not necessarily,” she says, bringing the glasses over and handing one to Sarah, taking a seat next to her. The two of them still contrast, Sarah taking up as much space as possible out of habit and Rachel folded in on herself, neat origami. “I’m sure I’ve been doing the same as you, really.”

“What’s that,” Sarah asks, words dry and black, like grave dirt in her mouth.

Rachel lifts the glass to her mouth and murmurs, before the rim of it touches her lips: “Killing time.”

“I’m not—” Sarah says, words bitten-off in her mouth, anger rising easy and familiar underneath her skin, but then stops. _Killing_ , Cosima says, _get it_ , and Sarah takes a deep pull of her drink. It burns, going down.

She is all over burning. Anger is a solar flare underneath her skin and soon it is going to explode.

Or maybe it isn’t anger. Maybe it’s that old persistent whine, _alonealonealonealonealonealonealone_. It’s clawing at her throat, Helena’s hands on her throat, Cosima’s hands on her hands – _alonealonealone_ – Alison’s weight in her hands, Katja’s weight in her hands – _alonealonealone_ – Tony’s eyes on her eyes, Beth’s eyes on her eyes alone. Alone. Alone.

Rachel’s been prattling on about something, some deep shit that Sarah should probably be caring about – she came all this way, she dragged her carcass back to Toronto for _something_ – but the sound comes through like it is underwater and she – she –

She doesn’t realized she’s moved but her lips are smashed against Rachel’s before she can think. There’s the distant muffled shatter of her glass hitting the ground, but besides that: silence.

 _Oh, shit,_ thinks Sarah, or possibly Cosima, maybe Beth, _oh shit_ – Rachel’s lips are stickydry against her own, and the force is starting to hurt and it is stretching on for way too long.

Then Rachel makes a high, strangled sound in the back of her throat and kisses _back_.

Then it’s something else entirely, Rachel’s hands tangled in Sarah’s hair, nudging against the braids and forming hungry claws in the thick brown-blonde-brown of it. Sarah leans further into the kiss, hands clamped on Rachel’s arms, expensive fabric sliding slithery underneath her fingers. She is burning so hot she might possibly die from it. Part of her wants to keep kissing Rachel Duncan forever; part of her wants to rip the other woman open with a knife and crawl inside of her.

Part of her is screaming _run_ and that is pumping adrenaline through her veins so she licks her tongue into Rachel’s mouth, licks her way inside of Rachel to pacify at least two parts of herself because that’s all she can give, all she can give, her thoughts are moving in increasingly panicky sprawls but she’s brought back sharply by the sting of Rachel’s teeth against her lip, the _yank_ of fingers in her hair.

Sarah pulls back, breaths shredding her chest like riptides; in front of her Rachel’s eyes are dark and unreadable and her chest heaves in equal time.

There’s a wobbling second where Sarah can almost taste regret on her tongue. She opens her mouth but Rachel’s cut over her, and the word “Bed” from her mouth, rough and dark and scraped from the back of her teeth, sends Sarah roaring to life again, _alonealonealone_.

“Bed,” Sarah agrees, almost a pant of breath, but she’s leaning forward to close the gap before Rachel can stand up all the way. Rachel melts obligingly against her mouth, hands hot on Sarah’s skin; she’s grabbing Sarah by the arms, awkwardly, pulling her by muscle memory forward – back? (is Sarah Rachel? is Rachel Sarah?) – across the carpet. Sarah grabs Rachel’s own arms, sucks the hiss out of Rachel’s mouth that says she is grabbing on too tightly, lets herself be pulled. They’re a giddy tangle of limbs stumbling, stumbling, stumbling forward.

There’s the crunch of broken glass under Sarah’s boots and then the _click_ as Rachel’s heels hit tile. Sarah is finding it understandably hard to concentrate; if they don’t reach some sort of bed soon she may just slam Rachel against a wall, hands, mouth, skin.

But then Sarah feels carpet again under her boots and Rachel lets out a pleased purr into Sarah’s mouth as the backs of her legs hit the bed with a thump. Sarah doesn’t stop kissing her, tongue sliding hot against Rachel’s own, but she uses her weight to _shove_ Rachel down onto the bed, straddle her hips as Rachel slides further up, one long sinuous motion.

She’s hunched over Rachel, a carrion thing, hands cradling the other woman’s face out of habit; her back aches but she’s not going to stop, can’t stop. Her hair falls over them like a curtain and she’s blind, reduced to sensation: the hot press of Rachel’s tongue against hers, the slide of Rachel’s hands under her jacket, shirt, onto her skin.

 _No_ , thinks Sarah, animal sound, and she puts hands over Rachel’s, slides them off of her, pins them above Rachel’s head by the wrists. It’s a pretty clear message.

Rachel breaks the kiss to just _look_ at her, eyes dark and warm and smug; when Sarah releases her hands Rachel keeps them there, her face saying this is entirely her idea and Sarah’s just so _angry_ , angry hungry angry, and she shoves her knee between Rachel’s thighs and grinds up, hard and fast, just to watch that look of control vanish for one _bloody_ second.

Then she follows her knee with her hand, slipping fingers under Rachel’s skirt, around the lace of Rachel’s underwear and straight into her cunt, crooking her fingers the way Sarah knows is best. And Rachel’s hands falter, claws at the bedspread above her head as she hisses, bucks into Sarah’s fingers, her mouth a red-painted “o” as she writhes. It’s almost too easy, isn’t it. She’s no different from any of the others, stretched out under Sarah like offerings, pinned against back walls like butterflies, not enough, never enough – Sarah is still _missing_ , still hungry, still alone.

She brings Rachel to climax mechanically, already thinking of how she’ll be gone. How this’ll go. Stand up, move towards the door—

Rachel’s hand is a claw around Sarah’s wrist and before Sarah can blink they’re flipped so it’s Rachel straddling Sarah’s hips, her face a rictus mask of displeasure.

“Don’t you dare run away from this, Sarah Manning,” she’s hissing, and then she leans in and bites savagely at the curve of Sarah’s throat, her hands sliding neatly into Sarah’s jeans, into her underwear, her fingers mimicking Sarah’s movements from minutes before and Sarah lets out a high, rough scream in the back of her throat – _nobody lays hands on me_ , she wants to say, ridiculously, because she doesn’t let anyone touch her, anymore, in this the two of them are the same.

She thinks: _run_. Her hips, traitors, roll into Rachel’s fingers, and her head tilts further back like surrender. Rachel’s sucking a collar of bruises around Sarah’s throat, bite marks that feel like they’re going to be permanent, bright starbursts of pain. She doesn’t run. Sensation crashes over her like a wave, a whole ocean of waves, like drowning. It’s so loud she can’t feel anything, so warm she can’t hear anything.

She lets out another wordless angry sound and comes, her muscles twitching around Rachel’s fingers inside of her.

Rachel uncurls herself, sinuous, until she’s perched on Sarah’s hips; she brings her fingers to her mouth and licks them off, lightly, her eyes still resting heavily on Sarah.  

Sarah’s opened her mouth to say something – she’s not even sure what, yet, and she can feel the spike of an _I_ lodged in her throat like a bone – but Rachel’s leaned back down and kissed her, mouth full and commanding against Sarah’s; Sarah can’t stop herself from leaning forward a little bit and then Rachel’s rolling backwards, sucking at the skin of Sarah’s lip as she goes, until Sarah realizes she’s sitting up and her hands have settled on Rachel’s hips.

Against Sarah Rachel’s lips taste like whiskey and old blood, tired sacrifice. All Sarah can hear is the sound of her own blood pumping underneath her skin – like all the blood she’s shed has come back to haunt her, like all she’s doing is kissing ghosts.

Before that thought can breach Rachel’s broken the kiss; she curls into herself, a bit, just kind of _looks_ at Sarah before sliding off of Sarah’s hips and shifting to the edge of the bed.

“I think I need another drink,” she says wryly, over her shoulder, “would you like anything,” and Sarah croaks “No” with a sort of numb confusion, her eyes stuck on the lines of Rachel’s shoulders underneath her shirt, the way her muscles move in familiar twitches as she slides off the bed, pads to her kitchen. Without heels the way she moves is similar to Sarah, in a way Sarah hasn’t seen in – well. A long time.

“No,” she mutters to herself again, the sound very loud in the silence. No: for now, Sarah thinks, she’s going to stay right here.

**Author's Note:**

> You wake up a stranger to yourself  
> Then you learn to live with her  
> Sit in her clothing 'til you fill out her figure
> 
> You try to do it right though  
> Right though, until you let the kite go  
> Death and romance, the riddles of our lifetimes  
> Tryna get a slow dance, middle of a knife fight  
> You get up and you, you give blood  
> Even on a good night  
> Even on a good night out  
> You send signal, you listen for an echo  
> At the first splinters, you run to tell Geppetto  
> And in the worst winters, the whole thing the whole thing feels untenable  
> Crow took me by the shoulder  
> And he told me honey, don't let go  
> \--"The Crow," Dessa
> 
> Did you like it? Please leave kudos + comments. Validate me.


End file.
